The call to go up the ladders was the sweetest sound I heard throughout the trip. First, the men to relieve us would come clattering down, and soon after we were free to go back to daylight and fresh air again. There was generally a shout of gladness on such occasions, the firemen being quite as happy as the inexperienced trimmers. My little Italian friend used to sing "Santa Lucia" on nearly every climb bathwards and bunkwards. A wash-down awaited all of us at the top, and soon after a sumptuous meal, in quantity and wholesomeness certainly as good as anything given the saloon passengers. The head fireman insisted on our eating all that we could. He wanted able-bodied, well-nourished trimmers on his staff, and I, at least, often had to eat more than I wanted, or really needed. One day I decided to try to escape a watch. The night before I had hardly slept at all, my eyes were painfully sore from cinders getting into them, and I was generally pretty well used up. Other men had been relieved of duty at different times, and it seemed to me that my turn was due. I went to the doctor. "Well?" he said in English. I dwelt mainly on my sore eyes, telling him how the heat inflamed them. "Let me see them," and he threw back the lids in turn, washing out each eye as if it had been a marble-top table. "How about them now?" he questioned, after throwing away the blackened cloth. It would have paid to tell him that they were better if only to keep him from going at them again. "Oh, but my lame back!" I replied, glad to shift the doctor's attention in that direction. The worst he could do to my back was to put a plaster on it, I reasoned, and this would almost certainly relieve me of one watch at least. "Don't stoop so much," was all he would recommend. "What else?" "Well, Doctor," I pursued, "I'm sick, sick all over. I need at least one watch to rest up in." The good man became facetious. "Why, we're all sick," he laughed. "The captain, the first officer, the cook, and what not. We're terribly short-handed. If you don't keep your watches the ship simply won't go, and heaven knows when we'll see Bremerhaven." I smiled a very sickly smile, and retired. If the old _Elbe_ was so hard up for propulsion power that my weak services were unequivocally necessary, then of course I must do my utmost to save the lives, perhaps, of the precious freight in the cabins--but, oh! how I wished that I had remained in Hoboken and become a saloonkeeper, anything in fact but a coal-passer.